Page:Advanced Australia.djvu/70

Minister of Agriculture, Measuring about 420 miles from east to west, by 250 from north to south, with an area, roughly, of 88,000 sq. miles, Victoria is the smallest colony on the continent, its area being about equal to that of Great Britain. One thirty-fourth part of Australia, it contains one-third of her inhabitants; and has a density of population equal to thirteen and a half souls to the sq. mile as against four and a quarter in New South Wales, and one in the colonies as a whole. Of a total of 1,170,000 souls, (65 per cent, of whom are native-born Australians, a mere 215,000 being British, and 85,000 Irish), 458,000 are settled in Greater Melbourne: leaving for the country districts but little more than 700,000, of whom half are females. 350,000 males, then, had, in 1898, 3,240,000 acres under cultivation of some sort, as cultivation is understood in Australia, out of a total territory of 88,000 sq. miles; turning out in agricultural produce the equivalent of five millions sterling, and in pastoral (to leave mining for the present out of the account) seven and a half millions. It will be profitable to turn aside for a moment to consider the history of the Hen ties. In Horsefield's History of Sussex, it is written:—"In the year 1796, Thomas Henty, Esq., purchased the demesne lands in this parish (West Tarring), consisting of 281 acres. … The breed of merino sheep has been brought by Mr Henty to great perfection, and from his flock many have been sent to New South Wales." Mr Henty, we have it on good authority, took first prize wherever he exhibited his sheep in England, till at last he became an exhibitor merely for honour, being barred from taking prizes, on account of the immense superiority of his sheep over those of any other flock in Great Britain. His flock, which was formed with pure merinoes from that kept by H.M. George III., was sent out in part to